GeekMBA360

I’ve received a lot of emails from folks who are considering applying business schools. If you’re *thinking about* business school now, you probably won’t be able to apply until next fall. I don’t see any end to our current financial crisis any time soon. Each day more layoffs are announced. Business school applications and enrollment will increase dramatically next week. The competition will be fierce.

I was a member of the class of 2004 — according to the admission officer at the school attended, 2002 was most difficult year to get accepted across the board. I still remember how fierce the competition was then. I believe that the current recession is much severe than the last one. And your road to business school is getting even harder in the next 3 years.

But, all you can do is to focus on what you can control. Here are 10 things I think you can do now to improve your chance to get into a top business school.

1. If you were laid off, look for another job immediately. Get a consulting/contractor gig. Get a non-paid internship. Don’t be idle. Don’t bet on business school as your escape. It’s much better if you’re employed when you’re applying business school.
2. Put yourself into a leadership position. If you cannot get it at work, find a non-profit/associations that you can be a leader. If you still cannot find a position, go to start your own organization. In this economy, there are a lot of problems you can help to solve. The key thing is that you should start something because your truly care about the cause. Don’t start it for the sake of applying business school. B-school admission officers can see your BS right away.
3. If you like to write, start a blog and keep writing consistently. Pick a focus that you’re really passionate about it. The blog will add an interesting dimension to your application (if you write value content.) There are a lot of blogs out there. But, there are not that many blogs with consistent postings and good content.
4. Work hard to improve your writing — your essays are the single most important factor for your admission. There are consultants who will polish your writing. But, you know yourself the best. To express yourself well, you need keep improve your writing. English is not my first language, but my essays were quoted by admission officers. How I did it? I read, studied, re-read, studied, re-read, and studied two books: On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (On Writing Well) and The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition
5. Given how competitive the application process will be, you need to get a high GMAT score (700+). This is actually something within your control. How to prepare for GMAT? I’m sure you have read and heard enough advice about GMAT application. In my opinion, preparing for GMAT boils down to three key factors: 1) practice, practice, and practice 2) use a combination of books and preparation courses to increase your exposure to different problem solving approaches and sample questions 3) time management — you need to know how to pace yourself when you take the test on computer. See a follow-up post next Monday (11/24/08) on GMAT preparation.
6. During recession, most people are busy, stressed, and concerned about their job security. If you want someone to write you a recommendation, expect a long turn-around time. It happened to me during last recession one of my recommendation letter writers was laid off. He was busy looking for a job, and didn’t have the time or enthusiasm to write me a recommendation letter. Start early and secure your recommendation letters as early as possible.
7. Think through why you want to apply business school. During last recession, I knew a lot of people who were in panic mode — they were having their "quarter life crisis". They were confused. They didn’t know what to do next.  They thought that business school would save them from misery and gave them the ticket to wealth and future success. If you’re in the panic and desperation mode, you will not get accepted to a top business school. Your lack of focus and thoughtful career plan will be reflected in your essays and overall application package. Please take some time to think through.

I came across a great quote from Ken Fisher, a self-made billionaire and ranks #281 on the 2008 Forbe 400 list of richest American.

I just bought his newest book: The Ten Roads to Riches: The Ways the Wealthy Got There (And How You Can Too!) (Fisher Investments Press).

Here is what Ken commented about the current economic crisis.

"Q: How can this book help those who fear the current economic problems paint a dismal future without opportunity?

A: By getting them to see that isn’t how those who get super rich think—they never really fret current conditions. They know long term future will be better than the past—but they choose not to wait, because that would only put them another year farther from their goal. And they know today is transitory anyway. The sooner you figure out the right road for you, the sooner your journey begins toward where you want to get to."

If you’re worried about layoffs, recession, and your future — stop worrying now. It won’t help you!!! It’s time to do something. It’ll not help if you just sit there and feel miserable. Swing the bat and do something about.

A crisis is also an opportunity.

• Write detailed, thorough product requirements.
• Be consistent — some product managers change their mind a lot. As a result, engineering has to change what they just implemented. Unless there is some strong reason to change the requirement, you should try to stick to what you propose initially, and be consistent. It will save engineering a lot of headache, and help you build your relationship with engineering.
• Produce a roadmap with vision — engineering management need you to help inspire the engineers. Engineers want to know the product vision, strategy and goals behind product roadmap.
• Seek to listen, understand and engage in constructive discussions and debate.

Do you have any tips and lessons to share? Leave a comment.

Given the current financial crisis and job market, it’s getting pretty hard to switch jobs. I know a lot of people feel stuck at their current jobs. They’re frustrated.

You feel that you’re not going anywhere. You are not getting promoted. You are concerned about what to do next.

You feel that the upside of your current opportunity is small. But, the alternative is not that great neither.

You don’t like some of the people you’re working with. You have a difficult boss.

How to deal with frustrations? Here are some unconventional strategies:

• Think yourself as a corporation of one person.
• Start a side business immediately. Use the current job as source of financing. so the goal is not to get promoted. Your goal is to diversify your income, which will give you flexibility and freedom.
• With regard to  your job, your #1 goal is to keep the job while you grow other sources of income. Also, learn as much as you can from your current job. You never know how your current job will help you down the road.
• It’s not about the job or other people. It’s all about you internally. You need to overcome your internal doubts.
• Treat each frustration as an opportunity — it’s telling you that something is not working. you need to work on it.
• Keep working on your problems. Move forward and build momentum.

As a product manager, I often find myself internalizing conflict: sales team wants development team to build a new feature or customize an existing feature so that they can close a deal. Engineering team has its own schedule and resource constraints. They don’t like to be distracted by the one-off request. Plus, sales tend to be deal driven, and sometime they "cry wolf".

I think the tension between sales and engineering are nature and healthy — they have different goals, incentives, and perspectives. But, it’s the product manager’s job to balance the immediate sales needs and product roadmap, balance short-term quick-and-dirty product enhancements and long-term project, balance flexibility and discipline.

 
As a result, sometime there is a "war" going on in my mind: I know what sales team wants and I want to help. After all, if we can not bring in enough dollars in the end of the day, we don’t have a viable business. On the other hand, I work closely with development team, and I know how constrained their resource is. Plus, I’ve been working diligently to implement a disciplined process to review and prioritize feature requests, and make sure engineering team is not randomized and distracted.

I’m going back and forth in my mind — what should I do? This is hard for me because I cannot just take a position like sales or engineering does — I have a broader perspective and understand both sides. That makes my job a lot harder!

I have used several different mental models to resolve the internalized conflict:

• "Let them battle it out" — the pure facilitator model
• "Quantify as much as we can, and let the number speak for itself" — the analytic mode
• "Presenting the facts, and product board makes the decision" — the decision deferral model

Have you find yourself in situation like this? What’s your strategy and best practices?

"This is going to be all year, so it’s going to be a very frightening economy," Mayor Daley said. "Each one tells me what they’re laying off, and they’re going to double that next year. We’re talking huge numbers of permanent layoffs for people in the economy. It’s going to have a huge effect on all businesses." — According to CBS station in Chicago.

I love glassdoor.com. I have recommended it to a lot of my friends. It has become my favorite career site beside Linkedin.com.

Glassdoor fills a market need that neither Salary.com nor Payscale.com provides. It offers salary and work environment reviews at company level. For example, you’re offered a product manager job at Microsoft. You want to know how much product managers makes at Microsoft, and how people like or dislike the work environment at Microsoft. Go to Glassdoor and you will get the information you need.

I, and other friends have checked Glassdoor’s salary data — based on what we know about salaries in the companies we work for, we feel that Glassdoor’s data are pretty accurate. Glassdoor uses a "give and take" model — as a user, you provide your own salary data and employer review in return for other companies’ information. Glassdoor is like the "amazon.com reviews" for company-specific salary and work environment.

This is all great. TechCrunch reported that Glassdoor raises another $6.5 million. But, what’s their business model? How are they going to make money?

I can think that one model would be to provide employee feedback to corporations — there are some really honest review of company management. However, in this economy, when employees are trying to hold onto their jobs, will corporations really care about how frustrated their employees are? I’m not sure if companies would be willing to pay big bucks to glassdoor to conduct employee satisfaction/feedback surveys although it’d be quite valuable.

Glassdoor could sell salary data to HR departments. However, they’d be in direct competition with payscale.com and salary.com. It’s a pretty crowed space.

There is also the advertising model — google ad sense plus contextual relevant display ads. But, an advertising supported model is not a solid business model in this economy.

Glassdoor has done a great job building a community of users who passionately provide company reviews. They also have a valuable database of salary and company review data. But, their data have a down side — salaries and company work environments changes over time. A new CEO and management could bring a lot of changes to an organization. Salaries also change over time. A review from two years ago might not be relevant today. Company reviews are different from book reviews — company review data need to be updated frequently.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Glassdoor’s site. But, I think they’d be much better off if they’re acquired by a large company and become a feature of another product/service.

Unfortunately, they just raised $6.5 million — it’ll make it very hard for them to sell the company — VC will demand a very high valuation.

Raising a large round is a double-edged saw — it makes exit much harder for entrepreneurs.

I love Glassdoor as a tool. I hope it will succeed. But, I have doubts.

Scenario:

Bought a small house two years ago. Got a 5-year ARM at 6% interest rate — had a growing family with young kids, planned to upgrade to a bigger house in 5 years.

Can we sell the house within the next three years and still make a profit? Given the recession and layoffs, we want to stay conservative, maintain our cash position, and delay the upgrade to a bigger house. Will LIBOR rate goes up a lot in three years that we have to pay a higher rate when our mortgage rate becomes adjustable? Some worries.

What I did:

I’ve been watching mortgage rates daily. Late last week the rate came down a little bit. I locked in 5.875% for 30-year fixed. I know some folks has much lower rate than this when they re-financed earlier this year, but I think it’s a decent rate. I don’t want to wait for lower rate — the economy will get worse.  In the 70’s when we had stagnation, mortgage rate was as high as 10% - 12%. 30-year fixed at 5.875% is pretty low from historical standpoint. It also gives me peace of mind, and removes one uncertainty from my personal finance.

Some people suggests that I should wait — I still have three years to go. Essentially I’m holding a 3-year option to sell the house or refinance. But, I’m not sure how soon the housing market will recover and how mortgage rate will change. We’re facing the more severe financial crisis since Great Depression. I’m not placing a bet with my own house.

What would you do?

There is an old joke among economists that states: 

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job.

A depression is when you lose your job.

Don’t get overly concerned about recession or depression — let’s focused on what we can do, and take actions to put ourselves into better position to win.

What is the single most important lesson you have learned from the current financial crisis?

Here is what I’ve learned:

You cannot trust media, gurus, financial advisors, real estate agents, banks, mortgage brokers, etc. There is way too much noise out there in the market. And a lot of people are trying to make money out of you. To take care of your hard earned money, you must be financial literate, and learn to think critically about news, financial products, economics, etc.

It’s not enough to be well-informed. You need to think critically about information and act accordingly.

Too bad, frequently our education system and media "give us a fish, but don’t teach us how to fish".

I recently read a very interesting book. Although the book is about worldly wisdom, I think it’s one of the greatest investment books of our time. It teaches you how to think critically and independently.

The book is recommended by Warren Buffet at Berkshire shareholder’s annual meeting.

It’s written by one of the greatest investors of our time — Warren Buffet’s long-time business partner.

The book is Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition.